Can Realistic BitTorrent Experiments Be Performed on Clusters?

{N}etwork latency and packet loss are considered to be an important requirement for realistic evaluation of {P}eer-to-{P}eer protocols. {D}edicated clusters, such as {G}rid'5000, do not provide the variety of network latency and packet loss rates that can be found in the {I}nternet. {H}owever, compared to the experiments performed on testbeds such as {P}lanet{L}ab, the experiments performed on dedicated clusters are reproducible, as the computational resources are not shared. {I}n this paper, we perform experiments to study the impact of network latency and packet loss on the time required to download a file using {B}it{T}orrent. {I}n our experiments, we observe a less than 15% increase on the time required to download a file when we increase the round-trip time between any two peers, from 0 ms to 400 ms, and the packet loss rate, from 0% to 5%. {O}ur main conclusion is that the underlying network latency and packet loss have a marginal impact on the time required to download a file using {B}it{T}orrent. {H}ence, dedicated clusters such as {G}rid'5000 can be safely used to perform realistic and reproducible {B}it{T}orrent experiments.

Bibtex:

@inproceedings{RAO:2010:INRIA-00494410:1,
HAL_ID = {inria-00494410},
URL = {http://hal.inria.fr/inria-00494410/en/},
title = { {C}an {R}ealistic {B}it{T}orrent {E}xperiments {B}e {P}erformed on {C}lusters?},
author = {{R}ao, {A}shwin and {L}egout, {A}rnaud and {D}abbous, {W}alid},
abstract = {{N}etwork latency and packet loss are considered to be an important requirement for realistic evaluation of {P}eer-to-{P}eer protocols. {D}edicated clusters, such as {G}rid'5000, do not provide the variety of network latency and packet loss rates that can be found in the {I}nternet. {H}owever, compared to the experiments performed on testbeds such as {P}lanet{L}ab, the experiments performed on dedicated clusters are reproducible, as the computational resources are not shared. {I}n this paper, we perform experiments to study the impact of network latency and packet loss on the time required to download a file using {B}it{T}orrent. {I}n our experiments, we observe a less than 15% increase on the time required to download a file when we increase the round-trip time between any two peers, from 0 ms to 400 ms, and the packet loss rate, from 0% to 5%. {O}ur main conclusion is that the underlying network latency and packet loss have a marginal impact on the time required to download a file using {B}it{T}orrent. {H}ence, dedicated clusters such as {G}rid'5000 can be safely used to perform realistic and reproducible {B}it{T}orrent experiments.},
keywords = {{B}it{T}orrent; {E}xperiment; {P}erformance; {C}lusters; {L}atency; {L}oss {R}ate},
language = {{E}nglish},
affiliation = {{PLANETE} - {INRIA} {S}ophia {A}ntipolis / {INRIA} {R}h{\^o}ne-{A}lpes - {INRIA} },
booktitle = {10th {IEEE} {I}nternational {C}onference on {P}eer-to-{P}eer {C}omputing ({IEEE} {P}2{P}'10) },
address = {{D}elft {N}etherlands },
audience = {international },
day = {25},
month = {08},
year = {2010},
URL = {http://hal.inria.fr/inria-00494410/PDF/BtExpClusters.pdf},
}